*This conversation was moderated by KMXT's Davis Hovey immediately after the film screening in Kodiak. The five panelists kicked things off by introducing themselves:
· Elizabeth (Beth) Routzahn: Hi, I’m Beth. I don’t often use microphones. Formerly Elizabeth but I go by Beth Routzahn. I am currently the Base Kodiak Child Development Center [CDC] director. However, I’ve been on the island as a local, and most recently a Coast Guard spouse as well. I have worked since 2009 in the field of early childhood education as a caregiver, a trainer, now a director, a teacher, coach. I’ve also worked in Hawaii as a teacher and the director on a military establishment as well.
· Bianca Clark: Hi there. My name is Bianca and I do often use a microphone. I work with the Kodiak Island Borough School District as a preschool teacher. I have also been working in childcare for 17 or some odd years. Five kids of my own, between eight and 21. I have served alongside Beth here at the Coast Guard’s Child Development Center, as well as serving in the school district. I have an academic background in early childhood education and in special education. And I’m excited to be part of the panel.
· Juliet Bitanga: Hi, good evening everyone. I’m Juliet, I’m the owner of Juliet’s daycare and have been a licensed home daycare provider in Kodiak since 2014. I’ve achieved the Learn & Grow Level 2 & Seed Level 5 certification. With my incredible Filipino cooking skills, I deeply love and care for our children and their parents too, not only the children. I moved here in Kodiak in 2009 and I am very proud of my three children. I am Juliet and I’m a recipient of the 2023 Cindy Harrington Heart and Mind Award from Thread Alaska.
· Beate Daly: I’m Beate Daly. Erica Blondin and I started the Kodiak Collaborative for childcare and after school programming, and it’s probably best described as we wrangled up the right people to get into the room for discussions to address our child care needs and after school programming needs here in Kodiak. I have three kids. I have a 9th grader, I have a 6th grader and I have a 4th grader. Interestingly I lived in Seward and it was always the child care place in the basement of the church, that has been long standing in Seward and there’s so many parallels.
I run the Kodiak middle school PTSA. I’m also the president for the Alaska branch of the International Dyslexia Association, I’m a local reading tutor and I also work for ACOR locally as a lab technician – the Alaska Coastal Observations and Research. So I’ve got a lot little side gigs, because we are one of those families that you just have to make do, to make it work.
· Laura Norton-Cruz: I’m Laura Norton-Cruz. I’m an executive producer, writer, boom mic operator, audio editor, interviewer, [showrunner] the person who made sure everything happens in the films. So I worked with Joshua Albeza Branstetter who is behind the camera. We edit together, we make these films together, and I work on dissemination and trying to get funding to make films.
I'm also a licensed master social worker and certified lactation counselor. I work mainly on maternal child health and violence prevention and raise my two kids, who were the two kids ordering ice cream. They love this film most of all because they're in it. They have that little cameo; they order ice cream. And I live in Anchorage, Alaska.
Moderator/KMXT: Starting with Beth, can you share what’s one thing you took away from this film?
· Beth: The first thing is that watching the struggles that the families went through, the in-home child care families specifically, was that it seemed like there was a lot of just shadowy policies that they weren’t aware of. I wouldn’t say shady, but just things… there should be more support in streamlining that process. And we’ve talked a lot about it. I saw Annika [Woods] and we’ve talked about this during the KEDC [Kodiak Economic Development Corporation] stuff, like helping streamline this process for families.
The other thing was the policy. Policy is huge and it’s important. However, when you’re working in a private sector or startup business, policies often come without the financial support. I work in a position where, when there is a new policy, we can ask for funding, but a lot of people don't have that. So hearing that was really eye opening for me.
· Bianca: I think that one thing that really stood out for me as I was watching this video was it just felt like layers upon layers upon layers of different hoops and a lack of clarity on what those hoops are. And one of the providers sort of put it best when she was summarizing her experience, which is, she shouldn't have to make phone calls to four different places to get one answer, because every entity had its own process, its own set of policies, its own set of red tape. And then no one answering on the other end. So just that different component of having to sort of almost fight for something that should be more supported and more accessible, easier to navigate and possibly more streamlined.
· Juliet (answered in Ilocano, translated into English by her translator): The struggle to have enough staff and funding for child care here in Alaska has always been a major concern. A lot of the parents I work with also tell me how hard it is to find a child care provider in Kodiak that they can trust and work with in caring for their child. That’s why we have a deep need for increasing our options for child care in Kodiak.
· Beate: There were a couple of things that stood out to me in the film and one of them was how similar the communities in the film are to Kodiak. Through Kodiak Collaborative work, we heard a lot of those similar themes, so how widespread it is throughout our state. So we're very, very similar to Seward, Soldotna and Kenai in the film.
And the other part that really struck me were the numbers for the economic impact when there is no child care. Erica and I with Kodiak Collaborative started speaking, I’m not a public speaker, but started speaking up at Borough Assembly meetings, just to make it… like why this is an important issue. You might have assembly members or council members that don't have kids themselves, or they're so far removed, it's kind of sometimes hard to remember what it was like when your own kids were little, but it's really hard to look away from those numbers that we see in terms of the economic impact it has on communities and the lack of child care.
· Laura Norton-Cruz: Every time I watch this film and every time I went through to edit it, you know, different things stood out. And one of the things that I want to highlight, that I hope people take away from this, is that it didn't always used to be like this. If you remember when Laurie was saying in the café, you know, 'six years ago, I used to be able to call and someone would answer the phone and answer my question.'
And now you take a month to get an answer if you get one. So I think that, like purposeful defunding of positions in government has had a major impact on this and made it even harder, because so many jobs have been cut from state workers, and state workers aren't able to get raises or benefits that they need. So… there's a loss of capacity that has affected this.
Moderator/KMXT: This question is for you, Beth, so you work for the child development center with the Coast Guard. As you mentioned, this child development center goes through a national licensing process. So that's not through the state of Alaska. Could you talk a little bit about that process and how your experiences are similar to, or maybe different to the struggles that we've seen with the state of Alaska licensing process?
· Beth: So we are accredited through the NAEYC – National Association for Education of Young Children, and that process is very stringent. But like I said earlier, we have the benefit of having one that’s a requirement. So anytime something is required, we can ask for funding to support that requirement. So if a policy changes, let’s say if the square footage for a classroom changes, we can’t ask for that. However, if a line of sight thing changes, we can ask for accommodations or funding to support that new policy. So there are some exceptions. However, with that accreditation process, we do have someone come down, like the state [of Alaska], and inspect to make sure that we are meeting the policy requirements. It sounds like the state maybe doesn’t have…we [the CDC] have both announced and unannounced inspections.
Moderator/KMXT: You’re talking about, as we saw in the film, that inspector trying to do a last minute inspection at the site in Seward I believe it was, but you’re saying you have announced and unannounced inspections. That’s common?
· Beth: Yeah. It sounds like in the video that particular inspection was for a startup. So the expectation once you are licensed or accredited is that you are always meeting those expectations. So for me, that seems very stressful to not know that that inspection is coming. Especially if there’s someone that isn’t receiving an income right now for child care, you know, for those bodies that should be in their care. How are they supposed to stay ready at all times when they’re probably doing 10,000 other things to support life?
Moderator/KMXT: Bianca, this next question is for you. As a preschool teacher in KIBSD, you probably have a different experience than the independent preschool program that we saw in the film that was the only one licensed in Seward, I believe, and she was operating out of a church space. Could you tell us about the similarities and differences, and what in your opinion needs to change so that all Alaskan children can participate in a licensed preschool program?
· Bianca: So I kind of have a unique experience in that I work in a set of different, a series of different settings. I’ve been a parent who utilizes home child care. I have worked in private center based care. I have worked with Beth, as I said, the Coast Guard, military child care system, and then now through the school district. So kind of gives a little bit of a unique lens, sort of seeing all the different ways that things can be done, and it definitely aligns with just that sense of overwhelm and confusion and all the different layers for each different place. The rules are different for everyone.
This video, of course, focused a lot more on in home child care programs, which have incredible licensing hoops to jump through. We follow the Department of Education requirements, our district requirements. We have certified teachers; we have structured curriculum. We have different oversight that’s focused on our outcomes, our learning outcomes. We provide special education services in our preschool program so that sort of creates staffing and funding structures that are more stable, in some ways, more consistent than you would experience, I imagine, as an in home care provider.
To an extent, we benefit right now from Alaska's pre-elementary grant, which we are very excited to have. It has helped us to expand access for the community to high quality preschool that comes with its own requirements and its own expectations and its own components that we need to align ourselves with or to comply with in order to be compliant with the grant and demonstrate the growth that they require to continue to receive the funding moving forward. So that's another layer on top of the standards that we have to maintain. So an interesting piece is of course, it’s a grant. So grants are temporary right? And they have their conclusion. This is our third and final year of this grant cycle, and should it be that, for some reason, this funding would not be put out again for an application process, or if it did, and for some reason we were not to get it, we have to look at how we would sustain what we're currently able to offer to our community, or how we would have to drastically change what it is we're able to offer to our community which just has a direct impact on again, that access to quality care for everyone.
So we have some similarities in that we also use learning grow, which is the state's quality improvement system, because our teachers are already certified, because that's a district, you know, the deep requirement we already can achieve higher levels in learn and grows ladder, because many of our teachers have already completed coursework that meets the requirement, the training requirements that home care providers are struggling, perhaps, to try to find the Time or the funding to get to or the or the access. Do we even have some of those trainings that they require? And in many cases, no, and in some cases, we are providing that because we have the access to it, and are trying to spread that to our community as best we can. So that's sort of a benefit there. A downside, is that we have significantly more staff than an in-home childcare provider, and so when we are trying to meet that next level, we have more people that have to get all of those trainings done, as opposed to one or two. So again, it's just different for different groups, and the set of rules that exist just doesn't cover everybody's umbrella.
As far as the answer goes, I lack the answer. I'm certain the answer is, you know, fund universal pre K like, let's have universal access to early childhood education and preschool programs. Let’s get that out there. Let’s create one system of sorts, or one set of protocols, one set of red tape. Let’s make sure that our home providers and our center based care providers and our district providers, our district programs, all can have some sort of stable, reliable access to the funding that’s required for us to be successful and to provide them and then that helps our families, which helps our economy, which improves educational outcomes for kids, which in turn improves our economy. And the cycle just keeps spinning. So if we can find a way to pull a “Beate” over here and just get all the heads together and advocate, advocate, advocate, to make that dream, to me, happen; then I think we can make some significant impacts and some very real change.
Juliet, this question is for you. As you mentioned you run a home based family childcare program. How similar or different is your experience compared with the experiences of the home-based childcare providers shown in the film?
· Juliet (answered in Ilocano and translated into English by her translator): So as Juliet mentioned, running a home daycare involves a lot of her time. From my experience, when I first applied for my license in 2013, I had to prepare for an extensive background check, CPR and first aid certification, obtain a business license, track of plan of operation including facility policy and procedures, plans and rules for parents. In addition, I also needed to provide drawings of our physical home, both inside and outside, and obtain a house inspection approval by the fire department.
By law, I am allowed to care for eight children between newborn and 12 years old. And I have an annual on-site inspection of my home facility. Unlike other facilities, I only do daytime care and no overnight. In the beginning, language for me was a very big challenge in communicating with parents. But over the years, through my practice, I improved. Many of the kids love my Filipino cooking and the parents are so patient with me as we work together in raising their child.
Moderator/KMXT: I have a follow up, Juliet. So we also heard a little bit in the film about how the state of Alaska is supposed to provide translation services and provide materials in more than just English, and it seems that many have struggled with this. How do you think the state of Alaska could improve their processes for people in the child care system who speak languages other than English?
· Juliet (answered in Ilocano and translated into English by her translator): Having more people in the community like Nannette Helen House, who was the one who encouraged me to look into opening a home daycare is very important. We need professionals not just in childcare, but from different sectors to encourage others to go through the application process.
But encouragement is not enough. I was lucky to have my two eldest children who helped me in my application for my license, writing a policy and renewal. Having translators or interpreters or a small group of professionals to explain every step of the process will be a very big help. Having a panel or group of permitted/licensed home daycare providers who speaks languages other than English can also inspire others to learn more about opening their own home daycare.
Moderator/KMXT: Beate, this one’s for you. I know everyone’s already been mentioning the Kodiak Collaborative, so we’re going to ask you to share a little bit about how you found success with that, how that came about and maybe how others here in Kodiak can sort of use that grassroots advocacy to find solutions.
· Beate: So what Kodiak Collaborative did was divided the needs into three parts, and one of the parts was birth to five. The second was elementary age, and the third one, that needed attention, was secondary age, so your teens. Because there was a grant opportunity for after school programming within the elementary age, that’s the one…that’s how we got started on attacking that one first. We didn’t meet with success on that grant actually, we kept pushing and kept meeting with people. And what we kept hearing over and over again was ‘we don’t have the capacity to lift this.’ Okay, so if this can’t happen from within our on-island resources, where do we start looking elsewhere? So we just kept chipping away at potential solutions and even then, we approached Boys and Girls Club. But let’s look at a system that’s specifically designed for this right? So not a church that’s trying to take care of a need that isn’t designed for childcare. But let’s look at ones that are and so we approached Boys and Girls Club. They weren’t looking at taking any new sites. We approached YMCA, and this is tying into what made us a little bit successful was we didn't take a lack of response as a lack of interest. And I'll tell you, there was lack of responses. But if you know either myself or Erica personally, you'll know that we just keep going, you will address us at some point, right? We'll find you. And so from there, we got the YMCA interested, and it just so happened with the timing that they have a new director at the state level. And although they weren't really looking to open a new facility, they [the YMCA] were intrigued. They were intrigued by what Erica and I had collected information-wise, and when they came on island to check it out, and this kind of ties into what can people do to advocate, one of the big ones is to show up. And so when the YMCA showed up, we had a group in the room that showed up that one evening, even if they hadn’t been to previous meetings that we’ve held to get us to that point, they showed up at that one meeting. So we had a school board member, we had the superintendent that showed the school is on board. We had local policy makers in there, we had community members, and so it was pretty much a no brainer for them that, okay, we can make this happen here in Kodiak, they've got community buy in. And they first visited in April, and were looking at starting the first site in October at East elementary. So we’ll have YMCA after school programming at each one of our elementary school sites, hopefully within the next few months, but there is the licensing process. So what’s interesting about that, Bianca as you mentioned that you’re a school employee, so there’s the state Department of Education that has their own list of inspections and things like that. Well the YMCA is taking place at the school sites, but yet still has to do that state Department of Health inspection, even though they’re at school sites that have their own inspections.
And another piece that's interesting to that process was Erica got that phone call; because if, if you don't know, she took on the role of the director for the YMCA Kodiak, so she'll be in charge of all those school sites. I happen to stop by the office and I asked what any one of us can do in terms of hopping on board this type of advocacy is: how can I help? And she’d had a last minute phone call so that we could provide childcare programming by October at one our school sites. It was, ‘well we could do a virtual inspection and we’ve got 1 p.m. or 5 p.m. tomorrow. Which one would you like?’
And I happened to show up, how can I help? And they were prepping anyways but just throwing those emergency bags together and the checklist from those bags, and then, do they have eye dressings at Walmart or the Safeway here? And who else do we know in the community that might work at a medical clinic where we could get that check mark? So it's this huge collaborative process, and just as much as it takes a village to raise a kiddo, it takes a village to make something like this happen.
So those two pieces; show up. Thank you for showing up tonight. It’s huge. There’s people in this audience that needed to hear some of this information to understand the struggle. There's people looking to get into positions that will be decision makers at higher levels in government and local government that needed to hear this film. So thank you so much for showing up.
The other one is ask: how I can help? Everyone has an opportunity tonight to ask one of our local in-home providers, how can I help? There is that opportunity tonight and that’s how I would suggest taking on that type of advocacy. You don’t have to have years of education, experience, you don’t have to have a degree, you just have to have a will. And the words to ask, how can I help, and the mind to show up.
Moderator/KMXT: Laura, there's three in this series about childcare. Could you kind of tell us about the first film you made on childcare, what that was about, and how that has made an impact, maybe, what changes you've seen since that first one came about?
· Laura: So the first film that we made in the series was in 2023 about the lack of child care in Kotzebue. At the time, there was no licensed childcare for children under age two in Kotzebue, and there hadn’t been for 11 or 12 years. And I wasn't sure exactly what the documentary was going to be about. It was just going to… I said, Tracy, you’re going to start a child care, can we make a film about it? And so we did, and what it ended up largely being about were the…. And barriers to licensing.
And so we worked really hard. We burnt the midnight oil to get it out in front of the Legislature before the end of the session and before the vote on childcare grant program funding to really help make the case for why that funding was important and then also kind of push on the regulatory changes. The Legislature doesn’t necessarily oversee those kinds of regulatory changes, like background check portals and things like that, but legislators can lean on, call in, the commissioner and say, ‘hey, why is this happening? How can we improve it?’ And so that’s what happened. So Julie Coulombe, who you saw in this film, and Jennie Armstrong who was my representative at the time, were texting the whole film, saying we need to meet with the commissioner about this. And they immediately called the meeting. They applied pressure. I worked with media, the Alaska Beacon did a series of articles about it. And by July, the commissioner announced that she was going to change the background check portal and process within six months, and within six months it was changed. It wasn’t the only thing. I sent the film to the commissioner the next day is when the governor announced the child care task force. Yeah, so probably coincidence, but I think that the film did apply some pressure to what the task force took on and recommended and made it more public.
So some things have happened, and then they agreed to….they didn’t want to be in the first film and they agreed to be in the second film and they agreed to come talk, right? You saw them speaking at the screening of the first film. I said, ‘I know the first film is a little critical of your administration but can you come talk at this event? And I’ll give some context about the things that have changed since then, and they did.
Sometimes, I find that people in the nonprofit world are often afraid to criticize the state because they rely on them for funding and child care providers are very afraid to criticize the state because they rely on them for their license. But I'm just some filmmaker, I can say whatever I want. And so sometimes you need different partners. It’s kind of like, ‘what can I do?’
Well, one person can do one thing. They can maybe do the research, or they can provide this. And some people can be the more antagonist advocates. And I don't mean antagonist, you know, I try to remain very friendly and welcoming and solutions oriented, but someone has to be able to push from one end while other people are doing their advocacy from another end. And so that's what these films kind of are for. So after this first film, they said, ‘well Laura we’ve made some changes. Can you please tell them that these things are fixed?’ And you know, I said, ‘well I’m really glad that the online portal is live. I’m glad that digital fingerprinting is going live, but you know, I will continue to exert pressure until these things are really, fully addressed.’
And so I think that’s what we can do as voters, we can make sure that… Rep. Louise Stutes and Sen. Gary Stevens are not able to be here today, they’re both traveling. But you as constituents can make sure that they watch the film, right? ‘Hey, can you please watch this film? I watched it, and here's why I want you to see it.’
We can make sure that everyone running for those seats that will both be open, and everyone running for local office sees this, understands what they can do as the city council or as a borough assembly member; because there is a lot that can happen at the local level as well as at the state level here.
Moderator/KMXT: And just to recap, you mentioned some of the changes that have happened since this film was produced. So you said, you were filming in 2024 right? And then there was a note in there that as of February of 2025, the [new] website wasn’t live but the online portal is live now. Mobile fingerprinting is on the way, it sounds like. And then Beate just brought up the virtual inspections that are newer as well. So what else I guess are you hoping will come in the near future?
· Laura: Some other things that happened actually are that the Legislature in 2023, the Legislature approved an increase to the child care grant program, which helps operational costs of licensed child care, for the first time in over 10 years. And then they did it again in 2024, but each time it was one year only, and it was about a quarter of the amount that was needed… In this last year, I think because of bipartisan coalitions, they passed a permanent increase to the child care grant program. So some changes are happening that are positive. I think the Legislature is starting to recognize like we have to deal with child care. We can’t keep kicking this can down the road, or our economy is going to tank. So I think we have to keep that pressure up, especially after 2026 elections and new people are elected. Let's make sure they know about this. Let's make sure that they're prioritizing this. In this upcoming legislative session, they’re going to… we’re in pretty dire straits budget-wise. And so making the case that investing in child care gets more money into our economy and saves us money long term. Our second film is about the infant learning program and that’s the main pitch there, is if you pay for the infant learning program, you save $39 million a year in special education, K-12 costs. So… legislators and gubernatorial candidates, when we have that going on, we need to make sure that our candidates understand these ideas and that we’re voting for these values. Thank you.
